TOP PHOTO: The La Follette Utilities North Tennessee Avenue project is just about finished.

LAFOLLETTE, TN (WLAF) – The 200 block of North Tennessee Avenue looks totally different than it did in mid-December 2019. It was on the 16th when Ray Sisson, the job supervisor for Monolith of Knoxville, and crew started the razing and renovation project for the La Follette Utilities Board.

LUB hopes to move into the new building by the end of July.  “Operations and customer service will remain at the current LUB headquarters building.  Instead of everyone housed in one building, we will now have a campus of buildings, all within one block of each other.  This includes the vehicle maintenance building that we completed a few years back on the site of the old Loby Blox building (at the corner of First and Aspen Streets),” said LUB General Manager Kenny Baird.

These are before photos of the Prim Building (left) and the Sharp Building (right).
“We’ve renovated the Sharp building and turned it into office space.  We will house administration, accounting and information technology in that building,” said LUB General Manager Kenny Baird.

Baird explains, “Not only is this a much-needed project for LUB, it is also a downtown revitalization project that will improve the looks and value of the property in that area of downtown LaFollette.”

According to LUB General Manager Kenny Baird, “The Prim building was razed and a new building built in its place.  We tried to make it look as much like the old Prim building as we could.  It is a little bigger than the original building.  This building will house LUB’s electrical engineering department.”
“We didn’t have enough of the old Crab Orchard stone to completely cover the new Prim building.  However, we were able to use the old stone to build the planters in the front of the Sharp building.  So you can say we have a mix of new and old stone on the buildings,” said LUB General Manager Kenny Baird.

Baird said he hopes they will be able to have a public ribbon cutting and reception in the near future. “I would like to invite the Sharp and Prim families to the event so that we could publicly thank them for selling us the property and allowing us to repurpose it for LUB operations,” said Baird. (WLAF NEWS PUBLISHED – 06/28/2021-6AM)